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The Bugbot Can See Inside You

Steve Mellon/Post-Gazette. Metin Sitti, a mechanical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University, displays a six-legged device he’s developing that will someday be capable of making images inside small intestines. Sitti specializes in micromechanical devices. Post-Gazette photo by Steve Mellon in PIttsburgh on Wednesday, May 25, 2005. Story for Science by Byron Spice. Digital.

How would you feel about a robot bug crawling inside of you? At Carnegie Mellon Univeristy, scientists are making a medical robot that can do just that, but it’s not just to gross you out! The Bugbot is a very tiny robot with six legs and a camera that can travel in your digestive system and take pictures. Doctors will be able to use the Bugbot to deliver drugs to very specific places in your body, which means you would feel less of the side effects of some of the powerful drugs used to treat diseases. The Bugbot can also help doctors catch diseases much earlier, so that you could be treated and prevent a lot of the damage the disease might cause to your body. Someday, the robot bug could even help doctors perform surgeries. Maybe it sounds a little bit creepy to talk about a robot performing surgery, but it could actually make the process a lot less painful!